Saturday, March 15, 2008
Rough Notes - Poet's Breakfast
With a Welcome to Country from Grahme King, reciting Dharug Poem, on 'Men tending the Nest', didge tends the morning light, Denis Kevins now has an official reserve opposite the house, another Dennis Working at Bidwill recited Kevin's birds 'mending the torn air' with their wings. James Devany & a poem on Willows; Andrew Strickland-Had to get to a job
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Mornings of Voice
There are few living occasions like this. A moment when we sample the raw voice saying culture unaccompanied. When it appears on your patch you should attend and soak it up. There may be strains that cut across your sensitivities and tastes, but you need to be there to witness the speaking.
We should be thankful to the Festival that we are given this chance by so many poets and attendees to hear ourselves. Enjoy.
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
Katoomba Folk: The Poet’s Breakfast 2006
The breakfast was good too. The engagement was good, the attention spans long and the audience affable. There it was, a living tradition, alive in the morning air, speaking through the PA; turns of phrase, plays of speech, current and restated. Out loud, out live.
The ears were there too. The ears had rolled out of bed, put on warm clothes, lobbed their lobes into town, found a seat and established a fine quorum.
Willing ears, attached to alert minds, warm hearts and ticket holding hands is no small score. And a reading was done. A culture manifest, perpetuated, refined. As easy as, mate. As easy as.
It was good to be in the presence of so many interested ears. I will go again, and if you haven’t, give it a go.
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Harry Manx at Katoomba Folk
Harry smiles into the March mists of Katoomba each time he visits. His sympathetic strings roll in like a Megalong shroud and notes resonate. Some sun breaking the approaching blueness of winter. Marquees glow with the warmth of the Mohan Veena. For more than a festival moment we glimpse songs that find their mark here. As if strings divined laylines. As if a guitar could find true north when spun on local stones. This is the third time I have sat in a Katoomba autumn and listened to this finely wrought tool peal through festival aisles as a mystic axe should. Poised notes dance. Harry is also a charmer with a banjo that plots out smiles in the air like a sextant plotting star charts. His interest in instruments gives us more tones to describe, and colours the intervals between them to life. Homespun, well traveled and cosmic lyrics combine and walk through the searching lines spoken from the necks of instruments both exotic and familiar. His touring company is tight, playing in Katoomba after such unassuming rehearsal facilities as the Port Fairy Folk Festival they were ready and Harry delivered again. I like his unaccompanied moments too. Less the sound becomes too easy, always the danger when facility meets métier, I’d dearly love to hear extended instrumental blues/ragas on the Mohan Veena. Ragas, Chops and licks, ascending and descending, 12 bars and further, there is great promise in the mix and Harry’s humble delivery sits best with it. It is through this connection, these airs, that we lend an ear to the songs. We come to hear it.
Friday, March 31, 2006
A Mozaic of sound
Mozaik kick started the festival well for us on the Friday night. Nothing like a bit of talent to impress you at the end of a working week. And heartening to see others just beginning their work as you unwind with a brew. Anyways they seemed to be unwinding themselves as the set went on, enjoying their work no doubt. Presenting some fine tunes and some agile blends, Irish and Appalachian, swinging mid song into Balkan/Macedonian, even seemingly Greek rhythms and modes, then back again, without any hint of garishness, Mozaik works. These are not laborious efforts but light and playful, felt numbers. In fact songs that vivify the life of the listener with fine playing and discursive influences sit well together in their sets. The story telling in the songs press home the playing handsomely. Durrell once said parts of
Thursday, March 23, 2006
Truckstop Honeymoon's Blue Mountains Honeymoon Stopover
When the richest sentiments are expressed without pretension, there is gold. Truckstop Honeymoon are capable of this. They made rooms full of people happy on a regular basis, at Katoomba Blues and Roots + Folk Festival. The idea of them made couples in the room feel stronger; they are beautiful, earthy and clever; the show they bring out is clever, the protest they suggest in their songs is a beautiful blow. The mountains were richer for their presence.The Honeymooners are alive with good song and the lyrics spot on. The drive in their music hard to resist. Populating their songs with the sometimes good sometimes scary voters, taxpayers, cheque-collecters and unconsidered others they meet and live amongst, they speak ably. I caught them twice, it worked both times. Bought two albums and envied their prospects, which are very good on current performance. I suspect these discs will keep me good company for a long while, whether driving or rocking, waltzing or chewing. Songs like “Magnolia Tree” stay with you long past the next festival, affecting and simple. Truckstop honeymoon write songs that will go straight into the songbook. If barefoot stringpickin honest songs are kept by our young, these will be amongst them.
Hillbilly or swampfolk, I see them in the pantheon with Woody, but not forever beholden to him. They pull it off, as it were! This is one dangerous marriage. This union takes the wind out of rednecks. Or rather they breathe oxygen into the sound. They replace the cocky moonshine, pickups and shotguns with consciousness worthy of the name. Their work is increasing the repertoire of possibilities available to connoisseurs of banjo and upright bass, whomever that might be. And in their humour is insight that dismantles cliché one verse at a time. What they proffer I prefer. “Capitol Hill (I’m tired)” is a sharp tool hammering a good point home. Little bits of magic stick with you, though, like the “Weeki Wachee Mermaid”, brought to us at Katoomba accompanied by a charming, tap dancing, babysitting northcoast n.s.w. talent, name of Aileen. I felt stupidly happy that one of us was up there with both of them. (or possibly 2 of us). The folk festival is doing its job by bringing us this pair.
Talent like this won’t wilt in the face of life but grow richer with it, I hope we hear more.
Monday, March 20, 2006
Waiting for Guinness, tired in the ‘toomba and still letting the blood run free, or A lonely lost night of mariachis in the haze of festive fatigue.
Someone, somewhere was heard to say, at considerable volume “ Oh come on, don’t go you tie-dyed jeans wearin’ hippies ! This is Australian music, genuine, isn’t that right Ulrich Horchmiester ?” or was it Dirkland Kruithoffhiemer, or something of equal ethno-woggish wonder.
A singer implored late night rows of festival goers and sitters, to stand as one and dance in the true spirit of fiesta, (after all it was only night 2 of the festival). …and indeed provoked, some enthusiastic damsels rose, a distinct lack of valour or perhaps folked out fug meant that those dancing girls went without partners. But then, women are so often braver than men. Perhaps it was the enveloping fog or the venue being short on dancing / swinging space but there appeared to be a lot of waiting and too little Guinness, on the audience’s part. [I have seen WfG play to a hotter tent in the humidity of a Bellingen spring, also full of hippies, where the crowd jumped and danced till the rows of seats were pushed back by the sheer power of the possessed moving to those devil’s songs] Katoomba was in peril this evening of looking staid.
A lack of festiveness at the festival could be a demographic prob, maybe. (see Babyboomeration article), those who danced, those who made the move to be festive were young and exceptional of spirit perhaps.
The word Australian was cast about like a searchlight in quest for an answer; the multiethnic reality of myriad national musical styles mixing with seven different shades of showmanship presented something brilliantine and confoundingly unique when strapped together with distinct antipodean idiom and Australian accents. Were we a nation of people whom marked and celebrated our own development in cultural terms, we would hail and resound with this talented mob. Bugger it, Let’s do it anyway ! They were tops! Yes, tops !
Anger flashed through the air as a point was put that the song being sung was written by Irishmen who died for the writing of it, not by a once a year puffy hat wearing ‘ kiss me I’m Irish’ chancer. “ I’m not staying here to be yelled at..’ bemoaned one mug, and left. Celtic sensitivity suitably inflamed by ‘irish pigs’ being berated by Irish currency lads, the evening dived into a seedy Brechtian standoff between the player and the assembled punters.
The lead offender seemed to be going through what appeared to be the drug induced equivalent of hyperglycemia, “I will start punching something very soon”, the uber-titles said, “ … and if I am not fed soon, I will eat my audience. I will not be held responsible for my actions!” Certainly some had disappeared already, and whilst his comrades tried to quell the disquiet of the quiet, the effront-man surveyed us all with hunger in his eyes. The clever in the public seats were keeping a cool eye on the exit points available to them; this dynamic was creative, artistic maybe, but what was being created was in doubt to quilted nannas looking on admirably until the frontman grabbed his balls and announced the equal separation provided by his besuited member! The gauntlet enunciated, the knowing nannas smiled on, staunch. The ice cracked in this gentle way, and the audience edited in this gentle way, a point of no return was reached for the throng. The ones remaining were not letting each other off the hook.
The less sensitive punters called the showman’s bluff and stayed on regardless, shouting “Play the Lost Mariachi !”, a circus event ensued as the trumpeters strolled through the tent and blew merry serenade into the crowd, guitarists mounted the shoulders of alto saxophonists, or was it piano players surmounting the string section, I really can’t remember. A waltz was danced before the stage, and the carousing thing was done! A good time was had by all those who danced, and the humoured whom watched on good humouredly.
The challenge of local radical music is not that you were changed for life by it instantly, but that you were awake enough to recognize it when you were there. Musicianship and energy (especially the energy that comes of Weilish desperation) needs to be more than heard or seen, it needs to rake across your better judgement. Without it we may be trapped in the land of the boring four/four, forevermore. Something passing strange happened there in the tent. Verfremdungseffekt or killkennyred effect, a moment was witnessed at the festival.
Mt.VicMist. 2006